(l-r) Simon Corfield, John Pollitt and Kim Taylor. Photo - Andy McDonell
What is it with Japanese culture? Why does it have an urge to create
ever weirder and wackier entertainment? I mean, sure, we have Dancing
with the Stars, but I’m yet to see one of the Australian television
networks pick up ‘Human Tetris’ - the Japanese game show modelled on
the computer game of the same name - where contestants contort
themselves into a range of strange and improbable shapes to get through
a wall and avoid being dunked in water. But what’s that got to do with
The Bee? Well, on the surface not a lot I guess, but for some reason it
popped into my head when I started thinking about my response to the
play. Perhaps that’s because Japanese playwright, Hideki Noda has
created an equally unusual piece of theatre which contorts into a range
of seemingly improbable stylistic and emotional shapes right before
your very eyes. For instance, who’d have thought you could be chuckling
away to a slapstick vaudeville style chase one minute, then in the next
be shifting uncomfortably in your seat as you witness a perverse
onstage rape, where the rapist is a woman playing a man and the victim
is a man playing a woman. Yes, The Bee is weird alright, and it truly
is a cultural adventure of a very different kind to what we are used to
in the Western theatrical tradition.
Hideki Noda’s unique brand of physical theatre began in Japan and was
influenced by traditional Kabuki plays. However, during the early
nineties he was involved in a series of workshops in the UK, which
prompted him to undertake a cultural cross-pollination experiment - the
result being a hybrid form of theatre that was a fusion of both
Japanese and Western traditions. The culmination of this experiment was
The Bee, which was first performed at London’s Soho theatre last year
and now comes to Australia in this first local production by MoFuCoSu
and Darlinghurst Theatre.
The play is unique for a number of reasons, the main one being that
it’s the first of Noda’s works to avoid the path of translation
entirely; for while its source is a Japanese short story by Yasutaka
Tsutsui (Mushiriai – Plucking At Each Other), instead of Noda writing
it in Japanese and then having it translated, he began a collaborative
process with Irish playwright Colin Teevan, where the play was written
in English from the start. The result is a play that is set in Japan
featuring Japanese characters from a Japanese point of view, but
written in a fluid colloquial English that immediately connects with a
Western audience. It is no exaggeration to say that this is an
extraordinarily different kind of theatre experience.
The Bee is set in Tokyo in 1974 and follows the descent of a “ruthless”
businessman Mr Ido(Lucy Bath) as he morphs into a criminal through a
strange set of circumstances that involve a violent criminal Ogoro(Tim
Walter) taking his family hostage. When Ido finds that the police are
uncooperative and the media are simply out for themselves, his response
is to fight fire with fire – he decides to hold the criminal’s family
hostage in order to broker a deal. The result is a dual hostage drama
where the ante is continually rising.
Much of the play takes us by surprise and out of the realms of the
usual Western theatre experience. Right from the start the stylised
chorus of white-faced kabuki style reporters dislocates us and yet
connects us with the farce that we recognise in our daily experience of
the news and the way it is reported. There’s also a lot of gender
bending inspired by the Kabuki tradition - men playing women, women
playing men. Lucy Bath plays Ido, the male protagonist, with a kind of
androgenous energy that is intriguing to watch. While Simon Corfield, in sexy geisha drag as Ogoro’s Wife, gives a captivating performance
packed with the kind of ‘diva’ attitude that seems entirely appropriate
for a play that’s being staged in downtown Darlo, only minutes from The
Cross.
Detective Dodoyama(John Pollitt) is amusing and engaging as the
policeman who can’t seem to stop the escalating violence and Detective
Anchoku(Tim Walter) who’s character fancies himself as Steve McQueen,
gets lots of laughs and injects a lovely American fusion into the
piece, with his fast talking wise guy attitude. He’s also brilliant as
the criminal Ogoro with a very believable Japanese accent accompanied
by an hilarious stutter. Kim Taylor (who is a co-producer of the show
along with Simon Corfield) is wonderful as Ogoro’s son, with her
childlike facial expressions of fear and wonder.
The music and sound effects (Hayley Forward) help to bolster the
surreal atmosphere when the play diverts into slap-stick, comedic mime
and dance performance moments, that have a kind of ‘Manga’-like mania
to them. There’s also a lovely use of Japanese shadow lighting effects
(Sean Pardy) to establish characters and create dramatic entrances and
exits.
There’s astute direction and staging from Sarah Enright who gets the
balance right between the two competing cultures, in a piece which is
like a weird East meets West love child. There’s also inspired prop
substitutions (Andy McDonell), where a glove stands in for a gun to
great effect (with all its sensual Freudian connotations), while a fan
becomes a brutal bloody knife.
There is of course the obligatory, but highly entertaining karaoke
moment, as the King of Chefs(John Pollitt) in a fetching lingerie
apron sings a Japanese language version of Sinatra’s ‘My Way,’ complete
with disco lighting, as the other characters perform strange aerobic
dance moves. The strength of the play lies in these surreal game show
like sequences which complement scenes that are tragic, comic and
violent - all at the same time.
Watching The Bee is rather like undertaking a crazy dare, where you are
forced to snort a hefty wack of wasabi while your friends laugh on at
your discomfort. Which, I guess, brings me back to those strange
Japanese game shows… ‘Human Tetris’ in all it’s odd but magnetising
splendour - maybe The Bee has even more in common with it than I first
thought!
Darlinghurst Theatre Company and MoFuCoSu present The Bee
by Hideki Noda and Colin Teevan
Based on the original story Mushiriai (Plucking at Each Other) by Yasutaka Tsutsui
Venue: Darlinghurst Theatre Company, 19 Greenknowe Avenue, Potts Point Preview: Wednesday 28 November 8pm - $20 Season: Thursday 29 November to Saturday 15 December - $30/$25 Times: Tuesday to Saturday at 8pm, Sundays at 5pm Bookings:www.darlinghursttheatre.com or 02 8356 9987
